Bert Stern – New York

Never-before-seen portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Lee Radziwill and more, from a photographic legend.

The iconic photographer and legendary man about town Bert Stern had a prolific career spent in the midst of glitz and glamour: he shot supermodels, Hollywood starlets, ad campaigns and plenty more. An “original Mad Man,” as a 2011 documentary dubbed him, Stern documented sex symbols like Kate Moss and Marilyn Monroe, who were often made only more infamous by the breathtaking, unforgettable imagery he created of them. (Stern’s promotional image of Sue Lyon in heart-shaped sunglasses, sucking a red lollipop, is probably the first image that comes to mind in association with Stanley Kubrick’s “Lolita” — despite the fact that neither the sunglasses nor the lollipop appear in the film itself.) As an homage to the late great, a new exhibition, “From the Archives of Bert Stern,” opens this evening at Staley-Wise Gallery, which has represented Stern since its opening in 1982 and has been the exclusive dealer for his estate since his death in 2013. Gathered from Stern’s personal, editorial and commercial archive, the photographs in the show feature familiar faces as you’ve never seen them; many of the rare stills on display have never before been exhibited.

“From the Archives of Bert Stern” is on view through June 20 at Staley-Wise Gallery, 560 Broadway, New York.